How many times will serial cheat Craig Thomson get away with his anti-Celtic agenda? I keep thinking surely he has to know that he is scrutinised by the telly pundits when doing games live. Big Chris Sutton must love commentating when Thomson is refereeing, it gives Chris something to talk about throughout the match.

Yesterday he was at it again, and not just with Erik’s disallowed goal, there were several occasions when he gave fouls against Celtic players when the opposition players were not even claiming for one, particularly at corner kicks. To my astonishment he never gave Sevco a penalty, but booked McKay for diving in the first half.

Obviously I am delighted we are in the final of the cup, it should have been a wider margin, but the objective in any semi-final is to get to the final, and we have achieved that. I look forward to facing the Dons on November 27th, I just hope that we don’t miss as many chances against them as we did yesterday.

We should look forward to playing semi-finals and finals, but I have to confess it is with mixed feelings that I go to those games, and the reason for that is the venue. Hampden Park is absolutely useless as a National Stadium, there are so many negatives about the place that I wish they would bulldoze it.

The stadium certainly isn’t Celtic friendly, we don’t have a coach park, and some buses are parked closer to Glasgow City Centre that to the stadium. Whereas at the other end there is a proper coach park for the opposition. The Celtic supporters can’t even use the train because the station is at the other end of the stadium. Calling it a Shambles and a Dump just doesn’t cover it.

The stadium is too small when Celtic are involved in the final of a cup, we have more season ticket holders than Hampden has seats, and already we have Aberdeen demanding a 50/50 split on the allocation of the tickets. Now I have some sympathy with the Dons, they will be travelling about 150 miles to get to the stadium, but they took just over 10,000 to the semi-final, why should they get 20,000 for the final?

I don’t know how it will work when the SPL decide the ticket split, but I’m pretty sure the Dons will get close to their target number. I guess one way of doing it would be to give each team the amount of tickets they sold for the semi, then split the remainder 50/50. Which after sponsors etc would give us about 25,000 and the Dons 15,000.

For the Aberdeen fans the game being on a Sunday won’t help with transport, especially if they decide on an early kick-off, then again we get that every time we play in Aberdeen, and the same normally goes for Inverness and Dingwall.

Getting back to yesterday, you have to laugh at the Magicless Hatman. He claimed the gap between the two teams had narrowed, I think your man was confusing the gap in the goals scored with the gap in domination and quality. Celtic actually dominated the game more than in the 5-1 demolition, it was down to a great display by the Sevco goalkeeper, and of course Craig Thomson.

We have a hard schedule in the coming weeks with a visit to Dingwall and Aberdeen, then off to Monchengladbach, quite honestly in terms of the Champions League, I would put this season down to experience, and invest the money made to improve the quality of the playing squad.

I’m sure Brendan will have a five year plan, and I’m equally sure that the plan would be to qualify for the Champions League first and foremost in the first couple of years, progress from the group stages to the knock out rounds will be in years 3/4/5, anything better than that will be a bonus.

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The Celtic Supporters Association

The Celtic Supporters Association was the idea of Willie Fanning whose dream became a reality back in September 1944.

These were dark days on and off the pitch with the Second World War still raging and in comparison to those horrors rather more trivialy Celtic were not providing much joy to its supporters and defeat was a regular experience. Indeed the idea of a supporters association came to 27-year-old Willie while watching the Bhoys get thrashed 6-2 at Hamilton.

Willie decided to write to the Daily Record calling on fellow Celtic fans interested in establishing a supporters club to get in touch. A total of 14 people replied. Consequently a meeting was arranged at St Mark's and St Paul's Hall, Chester Street in Shettleston. The meeting proved to be a success - a provisional committee was installed and Willie was elected as President.

By the time of the second meeting at the A.O.H. Hall in Alexandria Parade in Townhead the word had spread. The hall was packed and car loads of supporters from across Glasgow and beyond eager to attend created a traffic jam along the parade.

A constitution was drawn up which allowed the new organosation to become an amalgamation of supporters clubs. Within 12 months membership had rocketed to 700 and the association had won the official endorsement of Celtic FC who handed over the responsibility of distributing match tickets to affiliated branches of the CSA.

The CSA remains a strong and influential body. Apart from following Celtic in massive numbers it has a social club in Glasgow and its annual Supporters Rally is a highlight in the Celtic calendar.

True to the traditions of Celtic FC the CSA also has a proud and continued ethos of raising funds for charity.